Raman crystal lasers in the visible and near-infrared

Raman lasers based on potassium gadolinium tungstate and lead tungstate crystals pumped bya≈120 ps Nd: YAG laser at 1.064 μm were developed. High reflection mirrors for the Stokes wavelength have been used to generate near-infrared and eye safe spectral region of 1.15–1.32 μm. Second harmonic generation of the generated Raman lasers was observed. Eifficient multiple Stokes and anti-Stokes picosecond generation in 64 crystals have been shown to exhibit stimulated Raman scattering on about 700 lines covering the whole visible and near-infrared spectrum. All stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) wavelengths in the visible and near-infrared spectrum are identified and attributed to the SRS-active vibration modes of these crystals.     

School Organization and Market Ecology: a realist sociological look at the infrastructure of school choice

Programs of school choice are based largely on the idea of a free market’. Recent reform efforts have been based on the assumption that market‐driven educational systems would bring higher achievement levels and greater satisfaction among clients. According to popular views, parents would shop for a school just as they do for any other commodity and competition between schools would ensue, with each school trying to improve itself thereby attracting consumers. There is a major drawback to this reasoning. Markets are rarely completely free from regulation and control, and the desires of individuals do not fully explain the social facts of school choice. As a complement to current school choice studies, a structural explanation of school choice within the theory of network analysis is presented. The study analyses choice in terms of inter‐school student transfers and explains choice as the combined result of two factors. The first is the organization of student mobility in schools, in terms of vacant positions (timing and volume) and student body composition, which posits nine ideal types of school organization. The second factor is the ecology of the market, given in the number of schools in each type. Research conducted in a large city in Israel serves as an example for the approach. The more general implications of the study suggest directions for the theoretical refinement of mobility and attainment studies in sociology.     

Can we administer the scholarship of teaching? Lessons from outstanding professors in higher education

Boyer’s call for the study of the “scholarship of teaching” has rekindled interest in outstanding teaching in higher education. However, most studies of teaching quality and student experiences in higher education have paid little attention to intense, meaningful key experiences and were limited in answering the pertinent question: Can universities administer excellent instruction? The current paper attempts to answer this question by providing exploratory evidence of key experiences in higher education. It is based on evidence from a large qualitative study of such episodes, using retrospective accounts provided by adults who speak about their best educational experiences in higher education. The results are grouped under three major thematic headings. The first describes the centrality of personalized student–teacher relations. The second focuses on the ways in which identification and integrity provided students with models to emulate; and the third tells of excellence in the skills of teaching. These results point that the administration of the scholarship of teaching is an intricate endeavor.